Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the display of enhanced top-down view images of curbs and other structures in front of a vehicle and, more particularly, to a system and method for synthesizing an enhanced virtual top-down view of an area in front of a vehicle using images from left-front and right-front cameras, where the enhanced virtual top-down view includes corrections for artificial body part protrusion into the view, low-resolution and image noise in view edges, and double-imaging of above-ground objects.
Description of the Related Art
Vehicles equipped with forward-view cameras have become increasingly common in recent years. Images from forward-view cameras are used for a variety of applications, including lane departure warning and collision warning. In these applications, the camera images are not displayed to the vehicle driver, but rather, the images are analyzed by a vehicle computer using image processing techniques, lane boundaries and potential obstacles are detected from the images, and warnings are issued to the driver as needed.
Even as the advent of new technology has made compact, reliable and affordable digital cameras a reality, an age-old problem continues to beset drivers. That problem is the inability of drivers to accurately judge the position of the front of the vehicle relative to an obstacle, such as a curb, when parking. Because of the inherent inability of a driver to see a curb when pulling into a parking space due to the obstruction from the front of the vehicle, the driver is forced to estimate how far to pull forward—hopefully without hitting the curb. This judgment can be difficult, as it relies on past experience, peripheral visual cues and other indirect information. If the driver judges the forward clearance incorrectly, the vehicle may not be pulled far enough into the parking space, or worse, the front of the vehicle may hit the curb, causing damage to the vehicle.
During a parking maneuver, the driver is usually concentrating on many facets of parking the vehicle, and may not think to manually turn on a front curb viewing display. However, if a front curb viewing system automatically displayed the most appropriate frontal images based on the context of the parking maneuver, most drivers would find this visual information helpful—particularly if the system not only selected the one or more views which provide the most assistance to the driver, but also produced enhanced views with corrections for visual distortions which are inherently present in wide-angle lens images.
There is a need for a forward-view parking assist system which takes advantage of the available images of curbs and other structures in front of vehicles, and provides drivers with optimized images which enable the driver to precisely position the front of the vehicle relative to the curb or other frontal object.